A Myatt Games trick-taking classic
myattgames.co.uk
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ROOM CODE
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Waiting for players (3–4 needed)…
♠ Black Lady
Room: -----
Round 1
Round Complete
🏆
Scoreboard
📖
How to Play — Black Lady
Players & deal
- 3 or 4 players (4 is preferred). A standard 52-card deck is used — if there are 3 players, the 2 of clubs is removed so the deck divides evenly.
- Everyone gets the same number of cards: 13 each with 4 players, 17 each with 3.
- Not enough people? The host can add AI players (Iris, Nova, Ada) from the lobby to fill empty seats.
Passing
- Every round, all players choose 3 cards to pass to the player on their left — this happens every round, unlike standard Hearts.
- You can't see the cards you're about to receive until everyone has confirmed their selection.
Playing a trick
- The player to the left of the dealer leads the first trick. Play then continues around the table.
- You must follow the suit that was led if you can; if you have none of that suit, you can play anything.
- Unlike standard Hearts, hearts can be played on the very first trick — there's no "hearts broken" restriction.
- The highest card of the suit led wins the trick. The winner leads the next trick, and this continues until all cards are played.
Scoring
| Queen of Spades | 13 points |
| Ace of Hearts | 5 points |
| King of Hearts | 4 points |
| Queen of Hearts | 3 points |
| Jack of Hearts | 2 points |
| Every other Heart | 1 point each |
The aim is to score as little as possible — points are counted against whoever won the trick containing that card.
Winning the game
- The dealer position moves one seat to the left each round, and scores accumulate round after round.
- Once any player reaches 100 or more, the game ends and whoever has the lowest score wins.
- If there's a tie for lowest, play continues to 150. If still tied, it continues in further 50-point increments until there's a clear winner.
📝
Version Log
v1.16
- Fixed a second, separate cause of the same kind of card corruption from v1.15's fix: each player's chosen pass cards were only ever cleared on the host's browser after resolving, so a second round could start with a leftover selection from the first still lingering, corrupting what got submitted. Every client now resets its own selection at the start of each round, plus a validation check on the merge itself that falls back safely if a selection is ever invalid
v1.15
- Fixed a real data-corruption bug: if the host had the game open in two browser tabs at once (e.g. a duplicated Safari tab, which copies its session), both tabs could resolve the same pass or play the same AI turn simultaneously, causing duplicate cards and mismatched hand sizes. Both actions are now protected by a proper cross-tab lock rather than just an in-memory flag
v1.14
- Fixed "New Game" appearing to do nothing — the round-end overlay was never being dismissed when heading back to the lobby, hiding the reset lobby underneath it
- AI no longer leads a spade above the Jack unless the Queen of Spades has already fallen, and avoids leading a heart above 6 whenever it has any alternative
v1.13
- Added AI players — Iris, Nova and Ada — the host can add them from the lobby to fill empty seats
- AI passing: never passes a spade below the Queen, prioritises offloading dangerous high cards (Aces highest), and favours clearing out a short suit
- AI play: leads/follows using an escalating caution rule based on how many times a suit's already been led that round, and dumps its most dangerous card when it can't follow suit
v1.12
- Playing a card now takes two taps — the first selects and raises it, a second tap on the same card plays it (tapping a different card just changes the selection), avoiding accidental instant plays
- Tricks taken now show as a stacked pile of real card backs, each one alternating 90° from the last with a slight offset — countable at a glance, so the "X tricks taken" label has been removed
v1.11
- Opponent card fans now face each player — vertical for the two side seats (taking up less horizontal room, and reading as held by that person), upside-down for the seat across the table
v1.10
- Moved chat/scoreboard/rules/version buttons to a cluster at the top-right, out of the way of the hand and the pass button on mobile
- Opponent seats moved further inside the table so their card fans no longer run off the edge of the screen on phones
v1.9
- Join code now prefills automatically when arriving from the hub's public games board (the hub wasn't passing the room code through in the link)
v1.8
- Fixed rejoining after a browser close/crash: matching by exact name now reclaims your existing seat (in the lobby or mid-game) instead of creating a duplicate player or locking you out
- Fixed the public games board writing the wrong field names, which showed "Someone's table" instead of the real host name
v1.7
- Card backs now use the official Myatt Games artwork, replacing the placeholder design
v1.6
- Home screen now uses the official Black Lady artwork as a banner
v1.5
- Live running scoreboard added as a pop-out (🏆) alongside chat
- Face-down "tricks taken" pile shown beside each seat during play
- Opponent card fans enlarged to match your own hand size, using the real card-back design
- Rules/How to Play and this Version Log added as pop-out buttons
v1.4
- Table chat rebuilt to remove a class of bug where an unrelated update (like a chat message) could replay the trick-collection animation
v1.3
- Full-table deal animation — cards now deal out to every seat, not just your own, with opponents' hands shown as a shrinking face-down fan
- Animated trick collection: completed tricks flip face-down and slide across to the winner's seat
v1.2
- Table chat and a host option to list the game on the public games board added
- Passing prompt now names the actual player you're passing to
v1.1
- Fixed a bug where playing the trick-completing card silently failed
- Fixed the active player's seat showing at the top of the table instead of the bottom
v1.0
- First build: lobby, animated deal, passing, trick play, scoring, and end-game logic
💬
Table Chat